This new variety of lily plant originated as a seedling which first flowered at Sandy, Oreg., in 1970, from breeding efforts which had as their objective the production of large flowered, upright and semi-upright Oriental hybrids in shades of pink and white, suited to forcing into flower out of season, heretofore unknown in the lily breeding art.
I achieved the desired objective in this case by using as the seed parent a selected clone from the strain `Pink Glory` and as the pollen parent a selected form of the species Lilium nobilissimum. In order to cross these distantly related lilies successfully, it was necessary to maintain extremely high greenhouse temperatures for one week after pollination.
The flowers of this new lily variety are characterized by an upright to semi-upright orientation, extremely large size and broad tepalled bowl-shaped form, unusually thick substance and a distinctive clear pink coloration with richer magenta-rose midribs, unique among Oriental hybrid lilies. This plant possesses unusually strong, stout stems with exceptionally broad leaves and in addition, possesses to a high degree the desirable characteristics of hybrid vigor, great hardiness and disease resistance. The clone also possesses all of the desired characteristics of excellence of form, color and habit and is a vigorous and good grower and propagator, as observed at Sandy, Oreg. This new plant is well suited to forcing out of season when the bulbs are dug at the appropriate time and properly precooled; late October-dug bulbs, properly precooled and potted in January, will flower under glass in western Oregon, with no supplementary lighting and at moderate greenhouse temperatures, in an average of 100 to 115 days. This new variety of lily plant has been asexually reproduced by me and under my direction at Sandy, Oreg., and successive generations, produced by natural propagation from bulblets, by bulb scale propagation, and by tissue culturing from bulb scale explants, have demonstrated that the novel and distinctive characteristics of this new variety are fixed and hold true under asexual propagation from generation to generation.